Monday 21 January 2019 – The second scenario in the DeAgostini campaign was Escape from Bree, which can be found in issue #61. The four hobbits (Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin) have met Strider in the Prancing Pony. The Nazgûl have caught wind of the Ring’s whereabouts and sneakily invade the city of Bree. Four mounted Ringwraiths start searching for the Ring.
Even with a delay in movement (the hobbits and Strider used their first move to traverse the interior of the Prancing Pony), the Nazgûl were hopeless in finding their prey. The Good side had priority on literally every turn, meaning the Ringwraiths carefully searched the buildings in front of them while the fellowship to be managed to sneak off the board.
Post-game thoughts
This was a very uneventful play of this scenario. The Good side literally had nothing to worry about, winning Priority and thus controlling the Ringwraiths every turn. Only in the final turn did the Nazgûl manage to spot the hobbits, but by then they had already safely made it to the board edge. I think this scenario would be a lot more exciting if the board would be larger (now it was just 3′ x 3′ or 90 x 90 cm) or if the Good side had to leave via the board edge where the Nazgûl had started the game. In this play there was no interaction between the Ringrwaiths and the Good heroes. This made the whole scenario quite anticlimactic, especially considering the many hours I had spent painting the Bree houses prior to this. These Bree houses are houses purchased from a German company called Ziterdes. They make excellent terrain for Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game in my opinion, generally not too expensive. When I’m playing this campaign again I think I will just use a 4′ x 4′ (120 x 120 cm) board, to make the scenario (hopefully) more exciting.
Strider and the hobbits will now traverse the wilderness and eventually make camp in the watchtower of Amon Sûl. But they are not released from the pursuit of the Ringwraiths just yet …